In the production of coke, dust is generated in large quantities. A very large quantity of dust is generated especially when material coal is charged into a coke oven battery and product coke is discharged from the coke oven battery. Since a coke battery is a huge group of ovens comprising a large number of coking chambers and flues alternately arranged above regenerators, places where material coal is charged or product coke is discharged, i.e., dust sources frequently move over a considerably long distance. In addition, since a coke oven battery is a huge plant, it is in practice almost imppossible to collect dust by providing a gigantic hood which covers the entire coke oven battery.
Therefore, collection of dust in the production of coke has so far been effected by from time to time connecting a fixed duct provided on the coke oven battery side to movable pipes provided on a hood on the side of moving coal charging cars, coke guiding cars and coke quenching cars. More specifically, a number of dampers are provided on said fixed duct in order to cope with all the operating positions of said coal charging cars, coke guiding cars and coke quenching cars, and said movable pipes are from time to time connected to said dampers of said fixed duct situated nearest to said movable pipes manually or by other means, to suck dust from these dust sources and then to send said dust to a dust collector.
However, in the above-mentioned conventional method, connecting and disconnecting of said fixed duct to and from said movable pipes must be carried out whenever change the operation positions of said coal charging cars, coke guiding cars and coke quenching cars. Moreover, these operations are in most cases manually carried out. Besides, positioning of said movable pipes is quite difficult in the connecting operations. As mentioned above, since a large number of dampers must be provided on said fixed dampers, the dust collecting mechanism is complicated in structure and it is difficult to maintain gas tightness as well.
As mentioned above, conventional dust collecting operations in the production of coke are very complicated and troublesome, and operation efficiency is low.